Chapter 6 Mapping Party Activism

Transcription

1 Chapter 6 Mapping Party Activism Parties serve multiple functions: simplifying and structuring electoral choices; organizing and mobilizing campaigns; articulating and aggregating disparate interests; channeling communication, consultation and debate; training, recruiting and selecting candidates; structuring parliamentary divisions; acting as policy think tanks; and organizing government. Not only are parties one of the main conduits of political participation, they also serve to boost and strengthen electoral turnout. If mass membership is under threat, as many suspect, this could have serious implications for representative democracy. The first part of this chapter outlines theories of how party organizations respond to changes in their electoral environment and considers the implications that flow from this understanding. The study then looks at evidence for trends and patterns of party membership in the 1990s, comparing estimates based on official party records in the United States and Europe with survey data in 59 countries from the World Values Study. On this basis, Chapter 7 goes on to examine the reasons why people join parties based on the factors considered in earlier chapters, including the impact of societal modernization and political institutions at national-level, and the role of structure, agency and culture that draw individual citizens into public life. Theories of Party Organization Change To understand their role and functions, following the convention established by V.O. Key, parties can be divided into three hierarchical components: parties-in-electedoffice, parties-as-organizations, and parties-in-the-electorate 1. Parties continue as vital sinews connecting the organs of government, including binding together the executive and legislature 2. Yet many suggest that accumulating indications of partisan decay are becoming clear elsewhere 3. Throughout established democracies there is now overwhelming evidence of a glacial erosion of partisan identification in the electorate, not covered by this study, reducing the proportion of habitual loyalists in the electorate who support their party come rain or shine 4. In addition, there is growing evidence that parties in established democracies face contracting membership rolls, understood as an indirect indicator for eroding activism 5. If so, the typical party organization may be contracting at middle level, limiting opportunities of political participation, undermining civic society, and lessening the accountability of leaders to followers. Historical and institutional accounts suggest that many particular factors may affect this process of party organizational change; for example studies examining the radical overhaul and modernization of the British Labour party in the 1990s point to their experience of repeated electoral defeats, the selection of specific party leaders committed to reform like Smith, Kinnock and Blair, and the internal power balance within the party 6. In other countries, specific crisis like the corruption scandals in Italy and Japan in the early 1990s have triggered the collapse of the party system, and a major overhaul of the party machinery for those surviving the fall out. American parties were transformed in the post-watergate early-1970s by legal reforms governing campaign finance and the wider use of state primaries for candidate selection 7. In this view, particular circumstances explain different party organizational structures within any country; Panebianco suggests that the historical conditions of their birth often stamp a particular organizational structure on a party, and there can be a time lag as institutions respond slowly to changes in their environment 8. Today Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, Greens and Facists, Labour and Conservative parties continue to bear the imprint of their origins. In contrast, modernization theories and sociological explanations give greater emphasis to long-term secular trends in the underlying social structure, notably the erosion of the working-class and trade union base for parties of the left, and how far parties respond strategically to these developments 9. In this view, while particular events may be important in specific cases, the more general catalysts underlying structural change relate primarily to the linkage functions party members perform in 1

2 connecting leaders with the electorate 10. Party organizations gradually react to the broader changing circumstances of election campaigns, and, in particular, the primary function of party members as channels of political communications connecting citizens and their elected representatives. Mass-Branch Party Organizations in Older Democracies In the postwar era, Duverger described the classic ideal of mass-branch parties where parliamentary leaders were based on a larger circle of engaged grassroots membership, and an even broader base of loyal voting supporters 11. This extraparliamentary structure had evolved in Western Europe with the expansion of the franchise as more and more electors needed to be contacted in traditional campaigns, well beyond the number who could be reached by the poll book lists maintained by electoral agents and individual candidates. Labour-intensive socialist parties lacking financial resources, exemplified by the German SPD, relied on a volunteer network of community supporters for contacting and mobilizing voters during election campaigns. In return for their work, the structure provided members with opportunities for direct involvement in internal debates about party policies and principles at local and regional levels, culminating in regular national conventions. Collective decisions eventually became embodied in the manifesto that set out the official collective party platform and bound the hands of government. Moreover where localized channels of recruitment prevailed, candidates for elected office were selected by, and thereby accountable to, party members, and ultimately constituents. In this model, the role of activist foot soldiers was to carry out the hum-drum local party work: attending branch and regional meetings, donating money, signing petitions, passing motions, acting as local officers and campaign organizers, displaying window posters and yard-signs, helping with door-to-door canvassing and leafleting, training and selecting candidates for office, attending the national party convention, and assisting with community fund-raising events, in short, making tea and licking envelopes. The motivation for getting involved in party work has been explained as the product of three types of rewards: ideological incentives (the achievement of gaining collective goals and giving expression to deeply held beliefs); outcome incentives (the rewards that come to the individual from achieving certain personal goals such as expanding social networks, getting a patronage job, or becoming an elected representative); and process incentives (derived from the inherent interest and stimulus of being politically active) 12. Of these, mass parties are heavily dependent upon the ideological rewards that come from working together to achieve certain common principles and ideals. Not all parties, by any means, met this model, even in post-war Western Europe, although Duverger believed that this model would gradually spread through contagion of the left. In contrast, Duverger also described alternative types of party organizations, including caucus-cadre models of shifting top-down parliamentary factions, with leaders selected by smaller circles of acolytes, local notables and financial backers, with a minimal role for a wider membership and formal organizational structure 13. Caucus-cadre organizations are essentially based on political elites, usually created within parliament. The United States has moved from caucus-cadre party machines towards direct voter primaries for candidate selection, bypassing any substantial and ongoing policy role for party members 14. Duverger also identified militia parties adopted by extreme right parties in the interwar years and by the Communists, characterized by a hierarchical top-down command structure with supporters enrolled upon military lines. Nevertheless the model of the mass-branch party proved a widely influential ideal-type, and in this context declining party membership within democratic societies has commonly been regarded as prima facia evidence of an erosion of the channels of political participation 15. Proponents argue that this type of organization facilitates internal party democracy, encourages stability and continuity since loyalty is expressed towards the broader organization rather than to particular leaders, and promotes linkages between civic society and the state, 2

3 particularly thick networks among voters, local activists, parliamentary representatives, and party leaders in government. Understood in this way, the mass-branch party model can be seen as an appropriate organization for the age of traditional face-to-face campaigns. Due to institutional inertia, residual organizational structures often persist well after their original function disappears. The initial structure creates institutional stakeholders who are interested in preserving the status quo. But theories of political communication suggest that this structure, and the role of party members in particular, may have become outdated in the era from roughly the mid-1950s to the early 1990s that has characterized the rise of modern campaigns in established democracies 16. Just as Bagehot distinguished between the dignified and efficient part of the British constitution 17, so in the modern campaign, members may have become part of the symbolic more than effective channels of party communication. This does not mean that local activists have become irrelevant to fund-raising, mobilizing supporters, and generating turnout in local campaigns, as they still play a role, simply that this has gradually become less significant than in the traditional era prior to television 18. Many accounts have described how West European parties evolved from the 1950s onwards towards an organization less reliant upon volunteer grassroots activists and the wider circle of loyal life-time supporters in the electorate and more dependent upon television for communications, state subsidies for resources, and paid professionals for advice 19. Argument continues to surround the best way to describe this organizational structure; in the 1960s, Kirchheimer saw this as the growth of the catch-all party that abandoned its ideological anchors in helter-skelter pursuit of electoral gain 20. Epstein, influenced by the loose decentralized structure of American parties, characterized the key developments as the rise of the electoralprofessional party 21. More recent work by Katz and Mair has depicted the most important developments as the rise of the cartel party that derives its financial resources and related services from the public purse, with the spoils divided among those parties already in parliament 22. In the light of changes in campaigning, Duverger s ideal of the mass-branch party dependent upon a volunteer tea and envelope brigade may be limited to characterizing, and perhaps romanticizing, a particular organizational structure evident in Western European and older democracies shaped by this culture, like Australia and New Zealand, in an era running roughly from the expansion of the franchise and the growth of Social Democratic and Labour parties at the turn of the century to the rise of the television age in the mid to late-1950s 23. For proponents of the mass-branch party structure, if there are low and declining levels of party membership and activism in older democracies, this could seriously reduce civic engagement. If parties today have shrinking membership rolls, and if parties provide minimal opportunities for those who do join to shape party policy and select party leaders, this limits the role of these organizations as channels of conventional political participation. Moreover, if parties have weakened as institutions this also reduces their function as mobilizing agencies in civic society, simplifying electoral choices, and boosting turnout. This may prove particularly problematic for social equality if leftwing parties are no longer capable of activating and channeling the political energies of poorer groups and peripheral communities already at the margins of power. Party efforts to contact, persuade and mobilize voters have considerable effects on turnout in local, state and national elections, particularly for social groups otherwise least likely to participate, by fostering social connections and providing electoral information 24. Representative democracy without parties is unthinkable, but representative democracy with minimal party membership is merely weakened in certain important respects. Party organizations in newer democracies The literature has been heavily influenced by the experience of Western Europe and Anglo-American older democracies, where the historic roots of most major party organizations were established as the franchise expanded in the late 19 th and early 20 th century, during the pre-television era. Yet the Duverger model of mass party 3

4 organizations has often failed to take root elsewhere. In newer democracies in middleincome countries, party organizations developed in a context where television was already widely available. In Latin America, for example, despite the spread of free and fair elections since the early 1990s, and the growth of multiparty systems, party organizations often remain poorly institutionalized. The defining features of institutionalized systems are that party organizations generally have regularized procedures, relatively cohesive structures, stable roots in civic society, and an independent resource base 25. In contrast, parties in Latin America commonly reflect personal support for particular leaders or parliamentary factions based on the division of the spoils of patronage and clientalism, rather than being founded on coherent programmatic party platforms, a core set of well-defined ideological principles, and a stable mass-branch organizational structure. In presidential elections, such campaign organizations are ideally suited to candidates launching personal leadership appeals directly through television advertising, with fundraising conducted through affiliated groups and personal backers, rather than working through decentralized membership structures and programmatic party appeals. Lack of institutionalization is even clearer in many African states, which achieved independence later than in Latin America, with African parties are often based on informal personal and lineage-based clientalistic networks and ethnic identities, rather than clear programmatic identities and institutional structures 26. In consolidating democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, some parties can trace their lineage back to inter-war era, but older and newer parties have difficulties in attracting members since partisanship continues to be associated with the corruption and malpractices of the old Communist party 27. Party building among local neighbourhoods, workplace and welfare associations, and housing communities often proved difficult during the 1990s, an era of rapid social and economic transformation. The remnants of Communist parties in Eastern Europe, reflecting long-standing cultural traditions, may function more as top down electoral and fund-raising machines dominated by the leadership rather than as channels of bottom-up internal debate and political accountability. Finally, there are a variety of non-democratic regimes with progressively more restrictive practices 28. These include hegemonic party systems or one-party predominant systems in which opposition parties are legal but with limited opportunities to compete for government office 29 ; authoritarian regimes in which most forms of political organization but the ruling party are banned; and totalitarian regimes than repress all forms of autonomous political organization and basic civic and political liberties, and the governing party maintains power based on control of the military and civilian bureaucracy. Under non-democratic regimes, leaders often use patronage, corruption, and intimidation to encourage local party supporters as another means to exert control over the general population 30. Under the more restrictive regimes, party membership may be relatively widespread but membership functions essentially as a top-down mechanism of control rather than a genuine form of bottom-up political participation where activists can influence the policy process, hold political leaders to account for their actions, and remove them if necessary. The debate about the role and function of party organizations raises large and complex theoretical issues about the role of parties in democracy that are well beyond the scope of this limited study but here we can examine a series of specific questions related to the role of parties as channels of political activism. In particular, is there good evidence that party membership has eroded consistently across established democracies in recent decades, as so often assumed? And what is the pattern of membership and activism in other types of political systems, including newer democracies, semidemocracies, and non-democracies? Evidence is derived from the official party records in twenty Western societies and these estimates are compared with survey evidence from the World Values Study from the early 1980 to the mid-1990s. On this basis, the next chapter goes on to examine the reasons that can best explain activism through partisan channels. 4

5 Estimated Patterns and Trends in Official Membership Rolls Are there convincing grounds to believe that party membership has fallen across many established democracies, or are commentators being seduced by romantic myths of a golden age of mass parties? One important source of data is the official figures or estimates of membership compiled by parties. Although commonly used, nevertheless it should be noted that these aggregate numbers can be crude and unreliable, particularly where parties exaggerate their support, or where central record keeping is simply inefficient or erratic. Ironically, attempts to create more accurate registers may produce an apparent decline in the rolls. As voluntary organizations, parties are rarely obliged to maintain public records. In decentralized parties, there may be no available estimates of national figures. The meaning and definition of membership also varies in different countries, for example in the United States it is commonly understood to be the party which electors report supporting when they register to vote, whereas in the Norway and British Labour party, card-carrying membership requires payment of at least a minimum annual subscription. Indirect party membership via affiliated organizations like trade unions and churches also complicates the comparison. Nevertheless even if flawed and inflated, these official records provide the best estimates available at national level. Two measures of party density can be compared: trends over time in the absolute number of members and also, given population changes, the relative party membership expressed as the percentage of the total electorate who are members (M/E). Using the most thorough comparative project, the Party Organization Study, Katz and Mair analyzed official membership figures in Western Europe from the 1960s through to the end of the 1980s 31. The study concluded that any apparent fall in the raw numbers of party members was, in fact, highly uneven. In Sweden, for example, membership had remained roughly stable, and in a few nations including Germany and Belgium the total number of members had even grown from 1960 to the late 1980s, while often contracting elsewhere in Western Europe. More recent analysis by Mair and Biezen extended the estimates from the early 1980s to the end of the 1990s, providing the most authoritative and reliable source. Trend analyses of these figures indicate considerable variations from one country to another (see Table 6.1). In thirteen long-established European democracies, Mair and Biezen found that the absolute number of members has fallen consistently, sometimes substantially, as in France, Italy and the UK 32. Along similar lines, Scarrow compared aggregate party enrollment from the 1950s to the mid-1990s in sixteen established democracies and confirmed a fairly general picture of diminishing mass membership in these countries, whether measured by absolute or standardized terms: Overall the decline is too general, and in many cases too steep, to dismiss as either an administrative artifact or as the product of country-specific effects. 33 At the same time the Main and Biezen estimates suggest that the number of party members rose in third wave Mediterranean democracies, including Portugal, Greece and Spain, as well as in post-communist Hungary and Slovakia. The contrasting trends in long-established and newer democracies are striking and important for the insights this may provide about developments around the globe. In addition, official figures on relative party membership in the late 1990s highlight substantial variations across the twenty nations. Austrian parties are closest to the ideal of mass parties, with party membership of over a million, meaning that about one in five citizens are members. Membership as a percentage of the electorate is also relatively high in Finland and Norway, but in contrast this ratio is lowest in the UK and France. [Table 6.1 about here] Yet the official records cannot answer how we should interpret the causes of this phenomenon and its consequences for democratic participation. Four limitations in particular should be noted. First, as with any trend analysis, the selection of starting and ending points is critical. It is unclear whether the 1950s and 1960s may represent an artificially high point in the postwar decade where subsequent patterns may represent a 5

6 return to the status quo ante. As Scarrow points out, mass-membership parties have not been the norm for most democracies in the twentieth century. Both before and after the 1950s, parties have shown an uneven pattern of commitment to enlisting supporters in permanent organizations 34. In addition, even more importantly, little evidence is available to monitor whether trends in party activism have fallen since the mid-century in parallel with membership, or whether the main decline has been in the more peripheral supporters who were never deeply involved in the day-to-day functions of the party. Studies from many nations indicate that activists in local branches represent a minority of all members 35. This pattern is confirmed in the World Values Survey in the mid-1990s, where roughly a third of those who said they were party members reported being active. Therefore the core workers may persist in recent decades, perhaps because of their greater ideological commitment to partisan causes and core principles, even if fringe supporters melt away. Moreover, the impact of any fall in membership upon the structure of the party remains unclear. The shrinkage of the grass roots base is often assumed to produce greater centralization of power within party organizations, as the leadership becomes less constrained by a mass movement. But, as Tan suggests, this relationship could be contingent upon many other developments, such as party traditions and ideologies, the rules of leadership selection, and the size of the party, rather than being an automatic process 36. Parties with a massive membership, like the Chinese Communist Party, can be highly centralized and hierarchical, while minor and fringe parties with relatively few activists, like the Belgian or British Greens, may prove extremely participatory, decentralized, and democratic, in part because they have a greater incentive to attract and retain supporters. Lastly the official membership rolls cannot tell us who joins parties, or indeed anything more about the political attitudes, experience and behavior of party workers. Therefore the available official membership data, while indicating decline in the relative number of party members in established democracies since the 1950s and 1960s, is unable by itself to resolve the meaning of these developments or to provide insights into the underlying causes of these trends. Estimated Patterns and Trends in Survey Data Alternative estimates of party membership and activism are available from surveys, although this source is also not without its flaws. In particular, cross-national survey data gauging membership trends is relatively scarce, and even more limited outside a limited range of established democracies. If only 5% to 10% of the electorate join parties, then too few members can be identified for sub-group analysis from the standard national election surveys. Notions of what it is to be a party member and activist may also often hold different meanings cross-nationally, limiting consistent comparisons. Where official membership is only loosely defined, for example in newer parties in sub-saharan Africa or Asia which have not developed a formal bureaucratic organization and official rulebook, many people may associate party members with party supporters or even party loyalists. Yet similar problems of cross-national comparability also plague official party records where membership rules can be relatively strict or lenient in their boundaries. What can be said is that despite these real limitations, where survey data is available, this can reveal important information about the background, characteristics, and motivation of party members, as well as distinguishing between self-reported passive followers and core activists. Most importantly, surveys allow us to move beyond the description of trends to plumb the reasons why people join. The most systematic and comprehensive cross-national study by Widfeldt monitored trends in party membership based on Eurobarometer surveys from the 1960s to the early 1990s in ten West European countries 37. The results confirmed that party membership levels in these countries were generally fairly low, varying between 5 to 10 percent of the population. Moreover in Western Europe, although there was no 6

7 precipitate drop, party membership tended to either slightly contract during this period or, at best, to be stable. Rather than facing an acute crisis, Widfelt concluded that the evidence raised questions over how well parties in established democracies were functioning as participatory channels. Evidence concerning a broader range of countries is available from the World Values Study (WVS), ranging from some of the most affluent nations like the United States, Japan and Norway through to some of the poorest such as Nigeria, India and China. Unfortunately not all nations were included in each wave of the survey, and there are some important differences in question wording over time, making it difficult to examine comparable trends over each successive wave of the survey. Nevertheless we can examine comparative cross-national patterns using the 1995 WVS which monitored whether respondents were active members, passive members, or not members in a range of voluntary associations in civic society such as labor unions, charitable groups, and environmental organizations, as well as political parties. For the cross-national comparison the categories of active and passive members were merged in the preliminary analysis to facilitate comparison with the earlier figures based on membership data, since party records do not distinguish between core activists and more peripheral members. To check reliability, the official estimates of relative party membership were compared with the survey estimates in the twenty nations included in both sources. Overall the survey suggests that 7.9% of the adult population were party members in the mid-1990s, a figure marginally higher than that estimated from official party records in the late-1990s (5%), but one reasonably similar given the different time-periods, definitions, and measures involved. Cross-national Patterns The results of the comparison in Table 6.2 provide independent confirmation, as Mair and Biezen reported, that levels of party membership differ substantially among Western democracies, and moreover that the variations in membership are even greater in other countries around the globe. Overall, in the 20 societies under comparison, party members constituted about 6 to 7% of the adult population; representing a substantial number, translating into millions of citizens in these nations. But the estimate disguises considerable cross-national differences. Among long established democracies, for example, in the mid-1990s, membership was most common in the Scandinavian countries, despite evidence that membership has fallen in this region 38. Many West European countries fell in the middle of the spectrum, with between 5-10% of the public joining parties, along with the Anglo-American nations. In contrast, relatively few citizens joined parties in Spain, Northern Ireland, France, and Japan. [Table 6.2 about here] Equally important, contrary to popular commentary, Table 6.2 suggests that at least in the short-term, party membership has not slumped consistently across all nations during the 1980s; instead in eight countries it fell, including in Sweden, Spain and Argentina, while in a few membership stayed stable, and it even rose slightly in eleven nations such as Iceland, South Korea and Mexico. The difference between the estimates of official party membership and those derived from the WVS survey data could be due to the slightly different time periods under comparison, the selection of the countries, or alternatively to some of the flaws and limitations in the official membership records and the survey data already noted 39. It is possible that a longer-term slide in membership in established democracies occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s, accompanying the rise of modern campaigns in the television age, well before the first wave of the World Values Study in the early 1980s. What the broader analysis suggests, however, is that parties have commonly experienced a short-term erosion of membership in some established democracies since the early 1980s, but the picture shows considerable variability, with strong contrasts among different societies. Such apparently contradictory shifts during this decade suggests the impact of particular political events on party 7

8 fortunes, such as specific election victories or defeats, changes in the party leadership, or membership drives, which can boost or depress voluntary activism and grass roots support, rather than the influence of secular trends like spreading disillusionment with partisan politics. [Table 6.3 about here] Even greater contrasts in the popularity of partisan politics are apparent globally, as shown in Table 6.3. In the mid-1990s, party membership lagged behind in many postcommunist societies, especially the Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Belarus. In the Soviet Union, party workers under the old regimes were manipulated by both patronage and coercion, to legitimate the Communist party, artificially inflating the figures, and these subsequently plummeted with a prevailing mood of anti-partyism 40. The pattern in Albania and Montenegro in this era may be a residue of the old practices. Many of the newer democracies in South America and Asia fall into the middle of the party spectrum. In contrast, the two African states in particular (South Africa and Nigeria) display exceptionally strong levels of mass membership in the early to mid-1990s, as do China, India, Bangladesh, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. We need to interpret this data with caution, as there are many reasons why these figures may prove unreliable or exaggerated, including problems of conducting survey fieldwork among poorer, illiterate rural populations. There are particular difficulties in eliciting honest responses to political questions among those living under regimes lacking a tradition of free speech and open criticism of the ruling party. When asked in surveys, the publics living under these regimes may report relatively high levels of party membership, if the question is regarded as a loyalty test towards the regime, like displays of the national flag or levels of turnout in one-party states, even if in fact few are voluntarily engaged, and some who declare overt support may even be actively hostile towards the dominant party. This problem may create systematic bias into responses in non-democratic regimes. In addition, as discussed earlier, the cross-national comparisons may not be comparing like-with-like, where belonging to a party means a paid-up card-carrying member in organizations with formal rules and regulations, as in the British Labour party, and just an unofficial party supporter in another, like registered Republican voters in America. The South African figure, for example, may reflect the public s overwhelming approval of Mandela s post-apartheid ANC, and enthusiasm for the new democracy, rather than any more formal sense of joining a party 41. In African states, party membership also carries considerable patronage benefits, including access to jobs, health care and educational opportunities. Nevertheless different cultural meanings of party membership also create difficulties in interpreting the official membership records where rules differ (as well as comparing parties within any particular country). Given these limitations, these preliminary estimates of party workers need to be treated with due skepticism until they receive independent corroboration, especially in non-democracies, but nevertheless the figures confirm considerable variations in patterns of party membership around the globe, and the reasons for these differences are worth exploring further. Levels of modernization, political institutions, the role of mobilizing agencies like unions and churches, and differences in social resources and cultural attitudes could all play a role here. Trends in Campaign Activism It is far more difficult to establish whether changes in party membership actually makes a decisive difference to the strength of party activism, or indeed to broader indicators of the proportion of citizens who are prepared to invest their time and energies in supporting candidates and parties during campaigns. We lack any systematic crossnational evidence that measures trends in campaign activism. The best that we can do is to examine trends within particular countries where national election studies have monitored long-term developments. In particular we can focus on the United States, which can be taken to exemplify some of the most advanced developments in the 8

9 professionalization of modern campaign techniques. If these developments have reduced grassroots campaign activism, it should be apparent in this country. The American National Election Study (NES) includes a battery of items monitoring whether Americans have become less engaged in common electoral activities such as donating money and attending meetings (see in Table 6.4). The evidence during the last half century across the long series of presidential elections shows that the proportion of Americans who persuaded others how to vote by discussing the candidates, arguably the least demanding form of participation, remains fairly high and the pattern shows trendless fluctuations over time rather than a secular decline. This closely follows trends in the other indicators of campaign interest observed elsewhere 42. The sharpest slump is the proportion of Americans wearing a button or displaying a bumper sticker, both minor activities that have become unfashionable. Since the sixties there has also been a modest long-term decline in activism within parties, indicating the erosion of grassroots party organizations, although the proportion of party workers active today is similar to the situation in the 1950s. As Rosenstone and Hansen have found, the proportion of Americans engaged in other types of campaigning remains fairly stable, such as those contributing money or going to a political meeting 43. Despite concern about declining civic engagement, the erosion of parties, and dramatic changes in the nature of American elections, levels of campaign activism have been remarkably constant over the last fifty years. Conclusions Many believe that parties are contracting in the middle level, in particular that citizens are deserting grassroots activity and are no longer volunteering for the usual functions of organizing and mobilizing party support, debating party policy, selecting candidates, and maintaining the on-going links between party leaders in government and their local supporters during the inter-electoral period as well as during campaigns. Yet rather than any crisis in party organizations, or even a more steady erosion, the evidence in this chapter suggests four core findings: i. First, aggregate evidence based on official records suggest that patterns of party membership vary substantially cross-nationally, even among Western democracies. ii. iii. iv. Both the trends in estimated official party membership from 1980 to 2000, and the WVS survey estimates during the 1980s, suggest cross-national variations in trends in party membership, with falls in some nations and increases in others (particularly newer democracies), rather than a consistent short-term erosion apparent across all societies. Much of the available data on party membership has been drawn from established democracies in Western Europe, but, in the light of their distinctive historical political experiences, these may well not represent the more global picture. The survey evidence indicates membership remains low in many post- Communist societies, but higher in some developing countries in sub-saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia. Lastly the impact of any change in party membership upon broader indicators of campaign activism remains unclear; in the United States, at least, there has been no significant slump evident across all the common forms of electoral activism during the last half century. It remains to be seen whether patterns have altered substantially elsewhere. Yet answers to one set of questions raises others and, in particular, it remains to be seen why there are substantial contrasts in levels of party membership among countries. Cultural explanations emphasize supply, in particular the way that changes in modern lifestyles and values mean that people in postindustrial societies are less motivated to join parties and express their interests via traditional channels. In contrast, explanations 9

10 based on theories of societal modernization focus on demand, in particular how changes in campaigning following the rise of television mean that party members are no longer vital for electoral success, and may well even hinder leader s strategic pursuit of wider popularity. The next chapter explores the underlying reasons for patterns of party activism and how party organizations have altered participation through these channels. 10

11 Table 6.1: Trends in Estimated Official Party Membership, Country Period Party membership as a % of the electorate, late-1990s % Change (i) Change in Numbers of Members Change in Numbers as Percentage of Original Membership France ,122, Italy ,091, US , Norway , Czech Rep , Finland , Netherlands , Austria , Switzerland , Sweden , Denmark , Ireland , Belgium , Germany , Hungary , Portugal , Slovakia , Greece , Spain , ALL ABOVE Note: (i) The percentage change in party membership is measured as a proportion of the electorate. All estimates of change are made for the specified period. Source: Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen Party membership in twenty European democracies, Party Politics 7:

12 Table 6.2: Trends in party membership, early 1980s-early 1990s Early 1980s Early 1990s Change Finland Iceland South Korea United States Netherlands Mexico Belgium Canada Norway Britain France Japan Denmark West Germany Ireland Italy Northern Ireland Spain Sweden Argentina ALL above Note: Please look carefully at the following list of voluntary organizations and activities and say which, if any, do you belong to? % Who belong to a political party Source: World Values Study 12

13 Table 6.3: Levels of party membership, mid-1990s Mid-1990s Mid-1990s South Africa 44.1 Finland 9.8 Nigeria 43.4 Australia 9.6 Albania 33.7 Turkey 8.8 Dominican Rep 33.4 West Germany 8.6 Mexico 23.3 Spain 8.1 Montenegro 22.9 Philippines 7.8 Macedonia 21.3 Czech Rep 6.7 Bangladesh 18.9 Slovakia 6.7 India 18.6 Japan 6.5 Switzerland 16.9 Azerbaijan 6.3 Uruguay 16.2 Bulgaria 5.7 Peru 15.7 Slovenia 4.7 Chile 15.6 Georgia 4.5 Norway 15.5 East Germany 4.1 Sweden 15.1 El Salvador 3.7 Brazil 14.3 Hungary 3.4 China 14.2 Latvia 3.3 Venezuela 13.8 Lithuania 3.2 New Zealand 13.3 Moldova 2.9 Romania 11.9 Estonia 2.0 South Korea 11.8 Russia 1.9 Serbia 11.4 Belarus 1.8 Colombia 11.2 Ukraine 1.6 Argentina 10.1 Poland 1.1 Note: Now I am going to read off a list of voluntary organizations; for each one, could you tell me whether you are an active member, an inactive member, or not a member of that type of organization? The figures represent the proportion of active or passive members. It should be noted that the questions used in successive waves of the WVS survey were equivalent but not identical, and the change in wording makes it difficult to compare estimates in this table with Tables 6.2 The wording in 1995 may generate different response rates as well. Source: World Values Study, mid-1990s. 13

14 Table 6.4: Trends in Campaign Activism, US 1952 to 2000 Persuade Meeting Party Work Button Donate Note: The proportion of the American electorate who carried out these activities during the presidential campaign. The items measure talking to others for or against a candidate (Persuade), attending a candidate or party meeting (Meeting), working for a candidate or party (Party Work), displaying a campaign button (Button), and donating money to a candidate or party (Donate). Source: The National Election Survey (NES)

15 1 V.O. Key Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups. New York: Crowell. 2 See the conclusions to Russell J. Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3 Kay Lawson and Peter Merkl. Eds When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 4 The most comprehensive recent reviews of the evidence are available in Hermann Schmitt and Soren Holmberg Political parties in decline? In Citizens and the State eds. Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Russell J. Dalton and Martin P. Wattenberg Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrialized Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5 See in particular Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen Party membership in twenty European democracies Party Politics. 7(1): 7-22; Susan Scarrow Parties without Members? In Parties without Partisans. Eds. Russell J. Dalton and Martin Wattenberg. New York: Oxford University Press. 6 See Eric Shaw The Labour Party Since Oxford: Blackwell. 7 John H. Aldrich Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Party Politics in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 8 Angelo Panebianco Political Parties: Organization and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 9 See, for example, Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell and John Curtice The Rise of New Labour. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Stefano Bartolini The Political Mobilization of the European Left, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Herbert Kitschelt The Transformation of European Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10 For a general discussion see Angelo Panebianco Political Parties: Organization and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Peter Mair Party System Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Alan Ware Political Parties and Party Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Pippa Norris A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Post-industrial Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 11 Maurice Duverger Political Parties. New York: Wiley; Leon Epstein Political Parties in Western Democracies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. 12 Paul Whiteley, Pat Seyd and Jeremy Richardson True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership. Oxford: Clarendon Press. P.84. Others have often divided incentives into material (like being given a government job), solidary (such as the social benefits of membership), and purposive (the achievement of programmatic and ideological goals). See Peter B. Clark and James Q. Wilson Incentive systems: a theory of organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly. 6: Duverger. Op cit. 15

16 14 See John H. Aldrich Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Party Politics in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 15 For a discussion see K. Heidar The Polymorphic nature of party membership. European Journal of Political Research. 25(1): 61-86; Per Selle Membership in party organizations and the problems of decline of parties. Comparative Political Studies. 23(4): See Susan Scarrow The paradox of enrollment: Assessing the costs and benefits of party memberships. European Journal of Political Research. 25(1): Walter Bagehot (1867) The English Constitution. London: C.A. Watts & Co. 18 Considerable dispute continues to support how far local campaigns can activate voters; on the United States see Paul Allen Beck, Russell J. Dalton, A.A. Haynes and Robert Huckfeldt Presidential campaigning at the grassroots. Journal of Politics 59(4): ; Robert Huckfeldt and John Sprague Political parties and electoral mobilization: Political structure, social structure and the party canvass. American Political Science Review. 86(1): On Britain see David Denver, Gordon Hands and Simon Henig Triumph of Targeting? Constituency Campaigning in the 1997 Election. In British Elections and Parties Review, 8: The 1997 General Election. Eds. David Denver et al. London: Frank Cass; Paul Whiteley and Patrick Seyd Local party campaigning and electoral mobilization in Britain. Journal of Politics 56(1): For a series of case studies, see David Swanson and Paolo Mancini Politics, Media and Modern Democracy. NY: Praeger; Richard Gunther and Anthony Mughan. Eds Democracy and the Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See also Kay Lawson Political Parties and Linkage: A Comparative Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press; Kay Lawson and Peter Merkl. Eds When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Susan Scarrow, Parties and their Members: Organizing for Victory in Britain and Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Alan Ware Political Parties: Electoral Change and Structural Response. Oxford: Blackwell. 20 Otto Kirchheimer The Transformation of Western European Party Systems. In Political Parties and Political Development, Eds. J. La Palombara and M. Weiner Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. See also Angelo Panebianco Political Parties: Organization and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 21 Leon Epstein Political Parties in Western Democracies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. 22 Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair Changing models of party organization and party democracy: The emergence of the cartel party. Party Politics 1(1): 5-28; Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair Cadre, Catch-all or Cartel? A Rejoinder. Party Politics. 2(4): On the growth and mobilization of socialist and social democratic parties see Stefano Bartolini The Political Mobilization of the European Left, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Herbert Kitschelt The Transformation of European Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 16

17 24 On the U.S. see Steven Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America. NY: Macmillan, pp On Britain see David Denver and Gordon Hands. Modern Constituency Electioneering: Local Campaigning in the 1992 General Election. London: Frank Cass. 25 See Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 26 See Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle Democratic Experiments in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Michelle Kuenzi and Gina Lambright Party system institutionalization in 30 African countries. Party Politics 7(4): See Herbert Kitschelt, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslaw Markowski and Gabor Toka Post-Communist Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Sten Berglund and Jan A. Dellenbrant The New Democracies in Eastern Europe: Party Systems and Political Cleavages. Aldershot: Edward Elgar; Peter Kopecky Developing Party Organizations in East-Central Europe. Party Politics 1: ; Paul Lewis Party Structure and Organization in East-Central Europe. Aldershot: Edward Elgar; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Marilyn Rueschemeyer and Bjorn Wittrock Participation and Democracy: East and West. NY: M.E.Sharpe; Ingrid van Biezen On the internal balance of party power: Party Organizations in New Democracies. Party Politics 6(4): ; K. Grabow The re-emergence of the Cadre party? Organizational patterns of Christian and Social Democrats in unified Germany. Party Politics. 7(1): For a typology see Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 29 T.J.Pempel Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 30 See Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther Political Parties and Democracy. Washington DC: Johns Hopkins University Press. 31 Richard Katz and Peter Mair. Eds How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies. London: Sage. Table 1.1. See also Peter Mair Party System Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 32 Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen Party membership in twenty European democracies Party Politics. 7(1): Susan Scarrow Parties without Members? In Parties without Partisans. Eds. Russell J. Dalton and Martin Wattenberg. New York: Oxford University Press. P Susan Scarrow. Ibid. 35 Knut Heidar The Polymorphic Nature of Party Membership. European Journal of Political Research. 25: 61-88; Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley Labour s Grass Roots: The Politics of Labour Party Membership. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Paul Whiteley, Patrick Seyd and Jeremy Richardson True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 17